1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to a frame capture apparatus, and more particularly to an apparatus and a method for capturing full-screen frames in real time.
2. Description of the Related Art
Nowadays, the online game is to be fashionable on the game world. There is a need for live broadcasting for someone who is not on-site can see the live match. If the match is processing the live broadcast, normally, someone utilizes a camera to shoot the computer monitor or outputs the analog video from the computer monitor frame. For example: the composite video broadcasts on television. If the video is to be broadcasted on the network, the analog video has to be converted into a digital video by way of video conversion. However, the frames may have deteriorated quality after several times of conversions, and the complicated converting procedure increases the cost of constructing a network broadcast station.
The available frame capturing software may be used to capture the frame on the computer. In the computer with Microsoft Windows Operating System, the key, Print Screen, may be used to capture the frame on the monitor. However, these methods are available for capturing a single frame only, and the typical game software is usually executed in a full-screen mode so that the displayed frame cannot be captured by the above-mentioned methods. Because the full-screen frame on the computer cannot be directly captured and converted into the video bitstream, it is disadvantageous to the live game broadcast on the network.